Sacred Cows and Lemon-Lime Gatorade

"If you're going to _____, you might as well ______."

There are many ways to finish that simple verbal formula. For example, "If you're going to shoot yourself out of a cannon to impress your friends on YouTube, you might as well buy a good life insurance policy." Or, "If you're going down with the ship, you might as well keep playing the cello with your friends on the top deck."

But however it's completed, for me that sentence is the flagship phrase for efficient behavior. I remember hearing my Dad say that all the time when I was younger, especially during my teenage years. Some simple examples: "If you're going to drive all the way to the mall, you might as well stop at the grocery store on your way home." Fine. Makes sense.

"If you're going to play softball, you might as well practice daily and play it well." Absolutely. As they say, Anything worth doing....

But here's one of my favorites, and maybe where the philosophy goes from being good, common sense to a little bit intense (sorry, Pops): "If you're going to insist on occasionally drinking Gatorade instead of water, we might as well buy the enormous tin of powdered lemon-lime Gatorade from the warehouse club and make it in huge, 2-gallon batches." Ugh!

First of all, if you ever tried the powdered version of lemon-lime Gatorade in the 80's, especially after it had been clumping together in the humid pantry for a couple of months (it was an enormous tin and lasted forever), then you know just how disgusting a prospect that is. What's worse, we had to drink it every time we wanted anything other than water or milk. Can we buy a 2-liter of soda? No, we have that Gatorade at home. Double ugh!

Secondly, it turns out that I didn't want Gatorade for its own sake. I'm not sure I could've articulated this to my dad at the time, and it sounds silly now, but I wanted the Gatorade to be a little more like the other girls on my softball team. At 13 or 14, I was an odd kid already - brainy, overweight, and pale with an awkward sense of humor - and I struggled to fit in with other girls my age.

They always turned up at the games with cute little ribbons in their hair, clear tan skin, and little bottles of Gatorade that their parents had picked up for them at the convenience store on the way to the ballpark. On some level, I thought that if I could just take one tiny step to being more like those girls -- one 16 oz bottle of common ground -- they might come closer to accepting and appreciating the other things about me, too. The huge plastic cooler of homemade yellow-green stuff didn't accomplish it. Of course, as an adult I can look back and see that my attempts to fit in by buying something everyone else had were way misguided. And I've come to love both my Dad's quirky practicality and my own awkward (but hilarious!) sense of humor.

In my professional blog today, I wrote about Sacred Cows (Stealthy Sacred Ninja Cows, actually) -- those value systems that are unspoken but still held high above the others. In our house, that was a special brand of efficiency, not one that saved time (quite the opposite, actually), but one that aspired to never wasting money or effort, especially through poor planning. This is largely due to the fact that my Dad, apart from sometimes being too smart for his own good, also grew up on a working farm where money and effort had to produce efficiently in order for the family to survive.

Aside from the powdered Gatorade, this meant it sometimes took hours to leave for a day trip to the mountains, because we'd have to pack for every contingency: What if it rains? What if we get hungry? What if we have a flat tire? What if we get invited by another family to a formal event tonight, and while we're there, Martial Law is declared and we have to escape and suvive with only our wits and what is in our car already?

Okay, that last one is a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. And as an adult, I find myself falling into those same thought patterns, as frustrated as they sometimes make me. It's completely second nature for me to attempt to plan out every contigency, to follow every possibility and guard myself against any and all negative consequences, no matter how unlikely or minor they might be.

I also find that efficiency of effort has become my personal, inherited Sacred Cow. For example, I work from home a couple of days a week, and I find that during those days it's impossible for me to leave to run a quick errand or dash out for coffee. Let's say I'm working one morning on a new chapter in my book, and I have a craving for an almond latte. There's a Starbucks less than 5 minutes from my house with a drive-thru window and a really nice staff. Easy-peasey.

But here's where I trip over my own feet. There's a voice in my head that says, "Well, if you're going to Starbucks, there are some other errands you should run while you're out - dropping off the film, picking up that book you've wanted, going to the bank...." And the voice is right, combining errands IS more efficient (especially with gas at $4 a gallon).

I'm usually still in my "semi-pajamas" (sweatshorts and dirty t-shirt), which is fine for writing at home and the Starbucks drive-thru; but it's not how I want to walk into the bank or the bookstore. Which means I need to shower. And dry my hair. And don't I have a bookstore coupon somewhere? Where did I put the film? Wasn't I thinking that I wanted a new frame, too? Since I'll be at the camera store, I should find that picture from Ireland and take it with me.... So now my 15-minute trip to get coffee has turned into a 3-hour event. And my ambitions of writing at home all day have been wiped out by a simple craving for caffeine.

In this case (and hundreds more like it), I would be much better off by resigning myself to inefficiency. Just like all forms or perfectionism, it holds me back by turning in on itself until it becomes totally overwhelming. And if it can turn a trip to the coffee shop into a whole morning affair, imagine what it can do to a bigger task - like writing a book. Sometimes I am so blown away by the enormity of doing everything efficiently that I end up spending more time planning and organizing my attack than in actually working. And when that fails, I typically cave to the pressure by procrastinating or ditching an idea entirely. Now, that's not even a little bit efficient!

Of course I know it's counterproductive. Of course I know that I simply need to learn to say: "I'm going to go to Starbucks and waste a trip out, waste $1.50 in gas. I just am." All I want is an almond latte - everything else will have to wait, despite the lure of convenience and my Sacred Cow of Efficiency.

It sounds sensible and easy, and just writing this out makes me sort of baffled that I find it so difficult to manage my time this way. But that's where my sneaky brain and all those deeply carved neural pathways come into play. Just like a Sacred Cow in a family system, my internal thought patterns are really hard to break. They've served me well in many situations and become a part of who I am, for better or worse. I continue to struggle against it, or at least try to channel it in ways that work for me rather than against me. But the truth is - for individuals and families - it's hard to teach an old Sacred Cow new tricks.